


Long Live the Queen

by yuletide_archivist



Category: Temeraire - Naomi Novik
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-12-20
Updated: 2007-12-20
Packaged: 2018-01-25 04:57:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,681
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1632683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuletide_archivist/pseuds/yuletide_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Written for Suaine</p>
    </blockquote>





	Long Live the Queen

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Suaine

 

 

"Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men and dragons alike will still say, 'This was their Finest Hour.'"

Katie laughed at the impression, and Temeraire lifted his head and sighed dramatically, as if to protest the injustice of the mockery. "That is what he sounded like," he insisted with the utmost decorum, concealing the wry smile behind his rows of teeth.

"It is not!" insisted Katie, whose real name was Catherine, but who was and likely always would be 'Katie' to Temeraire, for the woman he had known as "Catherine" had been dead for almost a hundred years. "I've heard Mr. Churchill speak," said the little girl with her hands held on her hips, "and he doesn't sound anything like that!"

"Perhaps not today," replied Temeraire, "but this was twelve years ago, before you were born, and moreover it was from a radio. He sounded very much like that at the time."

Katie crossed her arms and gave a good impression of her father's scowl, before imperturbably climbing up onto Temeraire's foreleg and sitting down on it, fidgeting with the dark green velvet dress that her mother had forced her to wear for the occasion. A few passing dignitaries looked askance at the sight of an eight-year-old girl perched there, but none of them did or said anything beyond a gentle nod to Temeraire and the occasional polite question about his health or James'. James himself was standing some dozen yards away, speaking in low tones about subjects likely too boring to contemplate with a man Temeraire recognized as Viscount Field Marshall Sir Bernard Law Montgomery of Alamein, occasionally casting glances over to Temeraire as though trying to gauge if a request to eat the Field Marshall would meet with agreement.

"Why must we stay here?" asked Katie plaintively, kicking her heels lightly against Temeraire's leg. "Can't we go flying or back to the covert?"

'Why indeed?' thought Temeraire with a smile, but he answered as he imagined James would have. "Because you are part of my crew," he said, "and we were all invited to attend the coronation and the party. James has asked that I make certain you do not misbehave, and if you do I am to eat you."

"You wouldn't!" exclaimed Katie, looking up with a mischievous grin. "If you did that, you would have no-one to captain you after Father retires."

Temeraire gave the best impression he could of a wry smirk (not the easiest feat ever with a dragon's features). "And what makes you think I should have you as a captain?" he asked. "Surely I can choose who I wish." He gestured with his head over to the royal table, at the Crown Prince and his younger sister, both sitting on the dias with their mother. "Perhaps I shall ask for Prince Charles to be my captain once he is old enough," he said, "they could hardly refuse me if I requested it."

Katie might once have thrown a tantrum at that suggestion, but now she merely slid back up against the crook of Temeraire's foreleg. "You are my dragon," she said. "Nobody else's."

Temeraire laughed, causing heads to turn momentarily as the chandeliers quivered with the force of his voice. "I am James' dragon," he corrected. "I may one day be yours, but only if you behave yourself properly." Katie responded with a disbelieving shake of her head as she patted Temeraire's leg possessively. Temeraire saw James, still pinned down by the Field Marshall's relentless assault of verbiage, smile surreptitiously as his eight-year-old daughter sat triumphantly on Temeraire's leg like the newly-crowned queen herself upon a scaled obsidian throne.

"Temeraire?"

Temeraire turned his head to his right, and saw two men approaching him, one in the bottle-green dress uniform of the RAC ('it's RAF now', he reminded himself for the hundredth time), and the other in a flowing crimson and ermine robe bedecked in symbols of pageantry, revealing him as one of the major participants in the coronation ceremony.

"Admiral," said Temeraire with a nod. The Admiral was practically dragging the robed man towards Temeraire, a rather absurd sight given that he was about half the size of the other gentleman, with a face and a demeanor that resembled a university don more than an aviator. There were rumors that the man had literary pretensions, indeed he had even written a children's book before the war, with his dragon as a co-author. Most thought such pursuits unsuitable for a man of Admiral Tolkien's age and rank, but Temeraire had found the book refreshingly charming, and had been not-so-discretely asking for a sequel of some sort for nearly ten years.

"Temeraire," said Admiral Tolkien, "if I may introduce Lord Fisher, the Archbishop of Canterbury. Lord Fisher, may I present the Honorable Lord Temeraire of Cathay, KDBE, MP, DSO, etc..." The portly gentleman in the scarlet and white robes bowed stiffly, remaining several paces further back than Tolkien. Even after so long, some people still found dragons absurdly intimidating. As though a few extra paces would dissuade a man-eating heavyweight from attacking.

"It is my very great honor, Lord Temeraire" said Lord Fisher, and Temeraire bowed as best he could while still crouched on the ground of the pavilion like the Sphinx with a little girl seated on his foreleg. The aforementioned little girl, apparently none too impressed with the Archbishop of Canterbury, ignored him completely and looked up at Temeraire.

"What is KDBE?" she asked.

"Knight Draconic of the British Empire," explained Admiral Tolkien helpfully, more for Lord Fisher's benefit than Katie's. "A companion honor to the Knight Commandery of the same. Sir Temeraire was the first to receive the award back in 1857."

"Of course," said Lord Fisher. He seemed to fumble for words for a moment, before coming up with something Temeraire had not expected to hear. "I am a great admirer, sir, of your first Captain. His tireless work in opposition to the slave trade alongside Lord Wilberforce has ever served as an example to me."

Temeraire hesitated only for the briefest of moments, but it was long enough for the Archbishop to notice. He glanced over at Admiral Tolkien, clearly trying to ascertain if he had said something inappropriate. Temeraire forestalled him. "Thank you sir, it's very generous of you to say that," he said somewhat more formally than he otherwise would have. Laurence was... he would have been deeply honored to hear that, I think." He said nothing more. If Fisher didn't take the signal, then Tolkien did, and the Admiral guided the Archbishop away from Temeraire and Katie with a few words of farewell, leaving them once more undisturbed. James, still mired in conversation with the Field Marshall (who had now invited several other army officers over to join them), cast a concerned look in Temeraire's direction, sensing the great dragon's change in demeanor as though feeling a change in the wind, but Temeraire shook his head slowly. It was nothing to be concerned about, after all, it wasn't as though he had anything to complain about, really, not compared to Levitas or Celeritas or poor Fulminatus. He had had Laurence for nearly forty years, longer than Maximus had had Berkeley, longer than many others. Laurence had told him once that he should never think about him in sadness after he was gone, and he tried not to, but Celeritas had said that the pain of losing your first captain never fully went away, and he had been right.

"Temeraire? Is something wrong?"

Temeraire glanced downwards to see Katie staring up at him, looking concerned. Clearly James was not the only one who had noticed. He shook his head and smiled. "Just old memories," he said. "Nothing to worry yourself about."

"How come you call Father 'James', but you call your first Captain 'Laurence'? Isn't Father's name 'Laurence' too? Isn't mine?"

"I am older than you and James are," said Temeraire with another smirk, "and thus I may call you whatever I like. When you reach a hundred and fifty years old, you may do the same." He did not know how to explain the real reason that while there were many Laurences that Temeraire had known, there would only ever be one 'Laurence' to him.

Fortunately, Katie did not ask further, but changed the subject. "Temeraire, is it true you knew Iskierka?"

This one brought a smile to Temeraire's face, as Laurence's name usually did. "I certainly did," he said. "Her first captain was Laurence's first officer and close friend. It was Laurence and I who took her from the Ottomans."

Katie's eyes widened. She was hardly the most assiduous student, but she knew Iskierka's first captain. Every schoolchild had known that name for a hundred years and more. "You knew Sir Granby?"

"He wasn't a knight yet when I knew him," said Temeraire patiently, "this was long before Badajoz and Waterloo. I was there when she hatched and bonded to Granby."

"What was she like?" asked Katie, now having completely forgotten the rest of the partly, content to lean back against Temeraire's leg and be told another story. "Was she like Strategon or Incendius?"

Temeraire shook his head. "Strategon and Incendius are Spitfires," he explained. "Spitfires are British dragons descended from Iskierka, but Iskierka herself was a Kazilik from Turkey."

"Was she as fierce as they say?"

Temeraire looked down bemusedly. "As fierce as who say?"

"Strategon told me that Iskierka was the fiercest dragon to ever live. He said that it was because of her that we beat Napoleon. He tried to say that she was the one who won the battle of Waterloo, and not you, but I told him that I'd tell you what he'd said and that you'd eat him if he didn't take it back!"

Temeraire tried and failed to restrain his laughter. "You should not be threatening the other dragons in my name," he said, doing his best impression of James. "I would not have eaten him. Instead I would have made you apologize to him and then perhaps I would have let him eat you, or at least cook you a bit."

"You would not!" said Katie with certainty, and Temeraire merely shook his head and smiled.

"So... what was she like? And Sir Granby?" asked Katie a moment later.

"Iskierka was very fierce," he said almost wistfully, remembering her straining at her chains in her enclosure in Danzig, or the fleet of merchant ships she had collected upon their return from Africa during the plague year. "She was brave and strong and had an enormous temper, and would sometimes go hunting for French dragons even when there was no fighting to be done, because she wished to win more prizes for Granby." His voice began to unconsiously shift from that of a bemused babysitter to a storyteller remembering an epic tale from long ago. "When we returned from France after we delivered the mushrooms to Napoleon so that the dragons in Europe would not die, and the admiralty wished to hang Laurence for treason, she was one of the reasons they did not."

Katie of course knew this part already, but she liked to be told, and so Temeraire told her of how, while he was gathering together with Maximus and Lily to rescue Laurence directly from Old Bailey (the building still bore the claw marks), Iskierka had flown into the heart of London as a distraction and landed at Westminster, loudly threatening to burn down the Houses of Parliament and roast the people inside if the government did not release Laurence at once. When none other than Horatio Nelson himself had stormed out of his office in the Admiralty to confront her, loudly damning her for a rebel and a feral dragonet, and threatening to call down dragons and ships and regiments of foot to kill her dead if she did not cease threatening the government, she had stared the victor of the Nile and Trafalgar in the eye, and dared him to do her worst, swearing to fight every dragon in the Aerial Corps at once if need be, and to beat them all, unless Laurence was released immediately. Temeraire couldn't be sure of course, but he figured that act, coupled with the realization that Temeraire had drawn half of the active-duty dragons in Britain into the force he was fielding to save Laurence, was what convinced Parliament to forget that anything had ever happened, and to instruct the Admiralty to do the same.

"What about Sir Granby?"

Sir Granby. Had Laurence ever stopped calling him that after the knighthood? Temeraire didn't think so. "Sir Granby was Laurence's very good friend," he said. That was what he had said to Iskierka too, not that it had helped, as Iskierka seemed (as always) to imagine that she knew precisely what was best for Granby at all times.

"Granby needs to be with other people," she had said when Temeraire had asked her why she kept insisting that Granby and Laurence spend more time together, "like Catherine and Captain Riley, and since they like each other well enough, and get along, I don't see why he should not be with Laurence". When he had replied that Laurence was already with Captain Roland, Iskierka had said that he should not be so selfish, and that since Captain Roland was not often around, there should be no problem. Temeraire had admitted then that it made some sense, but when he had told Laurence about what Iskierka was planning, it was the only time Temeraire had actually seen Laurence actually spit out his tea.

Five minutes had gone by, perhaps ten, before Katie asked him another question.

"Temeraire," she asked, "do you... think they'll ever find out what happened to her? Iskierka, I mean"

It was a question Temeraire had spent many a night thinking about himself. In the end though, he had always come back to the same answer. "No," he said in what passed for a soft voice for him. Every dozen years or so, there was some new report that drifted down out of the Afghan highlands about someone claiming to have found some relic or sign of Lord Elphinstone's expedition, but always they turned out to be forgeries and fakes, and after fifty years, Temeraire had stopped even asking about them. Whatever had happened to Iskierka had left no trace of her to be found, a vanished ghost in the endless wastes of Central Asia.

He shook his head. It was another long-faded pain, one he had learned to endure, a part of being alive, and he smiled back down at Katie. "But sometimes I do think she never really left."

Katie laughed and told him he was a silly old lizard, believing in spirits and ghosts, and he half-growled, half-purred in response, and returned his attention to the party, nodding to dignitaries and ambassadors and heads of state even as Katie gently drifted off to sleep on his foreleg, oblivious to the scandal this would likely cause in the papers tomorrow. By the time James finally managed to make it back over, the little one was dreaming peacefully, no doubt of Spitfires and Kaziliks and battles with Napoleon, having failed to understand what Temeraire had meant by saying that Iskierka had not truly left.

For life went on, and old friends left, through battle or time or vanishing into the mists and never emerging, but new friends, allies, captains, always took their place. He missed Laurence, sometimes terribly, and he always would. He missed Iskierka and Granby, Maximus and Berkeley, Catherine and Emily and even Volly, who had passed three years ago in his sleep with his Captain by his side, but always he could count on another new face, another new crew member, another new captain to replace the old, different, yet so very much the same as those who had gone.

And that was enough.

 


End file.
